The Vanished Messenger eBook

A man carrying a lantern, bent double as he made his
way against the wind, crawled up to them. He
was a porter from the station close at hand.

“My God!” he exclaimed. “Any
one alive here?”

“I’m all right,” Gerald muttered,
“at least, I suppose I am. What’s
it all—­what’s it all about?
We’ve had an accident.”

The porter caught hold of a piece of the wreckage
with which to steady himself.

“Your train ran right into three feet of water,”
he answered. “The rails had gone—­torn
up. The telegraph line’s down.”

“Why didn’t you stop the train?”

“We were doing all we could,” the man
retorted gloomily. “We weren’t expecting
anything else through to-night. We’d a
man along the line with a lantern, but he’s
just been found blown over the embankment, with his
head in a pool of water. Any one else in your
carriage?”

“One gentleman travelling with me,” Gerald
answered. “We’d better try to get
him out. What about the guard and engine-driver?”

“The engine-driver and stoker are both alive,”
the porter told him. “I came across them
before I saw you. They’re both knocked
sort of sillylike, but they aren’t much hurt.
The guard’s stone dead.”

“Where are we?”

“A few hundred yards from Wymondham. Let’s
have a look for the other gentleman.”

Mr. John P. Dunster was lying quite still, his right
leg doubled up, and a huge block of telegraph post,
which the saloon had carried with it in its fall,
still pressing against his forehead. He groaned
as they dragged him out and laid him down upon a cushion
in the shelter of the wreckage.

“He’s alive all right,” the porter
remarked. “There’s a doctor on the
way. Let’s cover him up quick and wait.”

“Can’t we carry him to shelter of some
sort?” Gerald proposed.

The man shook his head. Speech of any sort was
difficult. Even with his lips close to the other’s
ears, he had almost to shout.

“Couldn’t be done,” he replied.
“It’s all one can do to walk alone when
you get out in the middle of the field, away from the
shelter of the embankment here. There’s
bits of trees flying all down the lane. Never
was such a night! Folks is fair afraid of the
morning to see what’s happened. There’s
a mill blown right over on its side in the next field,
and the man in charge of it lying dead. This
poor chap’s bad enough.”

Gerald, on all fours, had crept back into the compartment.
The bottle of wine was smashed into atoms.
He came out, dragging the small dressing-case which
his companion had kept on the table before him.
One side of it was dented in, but the lock, which
was of great strength, still held.

Strong though it had been, the lock was already almost
torn out from its foundation. They forced the
spring and opened it. The porter turned his
lantern on the widening space. Just as Gerald
was raising the lid very slowly to save the contents
from being scattered by the wind, the man turned his
head to answer an approaching hail. Gerald raised
the lid a little higher and suddenly closed it with
a bang.